About the Blog:

Guelph Politico is locally sourced and dedicated to covering the political and cultural scene in the City of Guelph. Est. 2008.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

GUELPH POLITICAST #110 - Thomas Gofton, Founder of GenreCon

This is a serious time, and there are serious issues to discuss, but there comes a moment when you just have to walk away from the news, put on a costume, and talk about the finer points of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the last adventures of Doctor Who or the starship Discovery. Don't pretend you don't know what any of that means!

Guelph is a pretty nerdy town. Of course, we've got the University of Guelph, which has specialists and experts across a great, wide scientific spectrum, but "nerdy" in this instance means all things related to superheroes, anime, comic books, sci-fi, gaming, and much, much more. If you want all that in one place, you might consider booking a ticket to GenreCon, a Comic Con style event that is much more conveniently situated here in the Royal City.

The founder of GenreCon knows from nerdy. Not only is Thomas Gofton the man behind GenreCon, but he also owns the Round Table Game Tavern on Essex St, and the Afterlife Video Game Lounge on Wyndham, and he's a successful board game designer too. Of course, I know Tom from our days working at Synn Studios together, which is an indirect way of offering a disclosure that yes I have, in the past, written press releases for GenreCon and the Round Table as a freelance promoter, though I don't have a business stake in either.

Having gotten that out of the way, we can focus on this week's podcast where Tom and I remember some old times, while also talking about why Guelph seems to be such a nerd friendly place, the challenges and opportunities of being an entrepreneur in the Royal City, and why failure is not always a bad thing. We also get into some surprising political territory including the reaction among nerds to the actions of the former Governor of Indiana turned Vice-President of the United States, and the gradual female takeover of all things nerdy, which may be richly deserved.

So let's talk about making Guelph nerdy again on this week's Guelph Politicast.

GenreCon takes place at the Holiday Inn at 601 Scottsdale Dr on February 9 through 11. For more information, or to buy tickets, click here, or access GenreCon on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also learn more about the Round Table here, and Afterlife here.

The theme music for the Guelph Politicast is from the KPM Klassics collection by Syd Dale.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here.

Remember that the Politicast Podbean channel is also the host for podcast versions of Open Sources Guelph. The previous Thursday's episode of Open Sources will be posted on Mondays.